Kanji

Kanji is, by far, the most difficult aspect of learning the Japanese language. From what I heard, there are over 5,000 characters in the Kanji "alphabet." 5,000!!! That's quite big compared to our 26 character alphabet. Think of Kanji as whole words or parts of words. The word "Kanji" itself is made up of two different kanji. "kan" and "ji" (as you can see below in the chart.)

Kanji is only for people who have mastered Hiragana and proper pronounciation of Japanese words. Even then, it's kind of tough for most people. Here are some examples, though.